I am not sure how I ended up with two willful children. It could be my husbands bad genes, something in the water, or it might be because my mother cursed me by saying " I hope when you grow up you have a child just like you." Either way I have had to become extremely creative in finding ways to get them to play on my team.
One of the hardest things I have found as a parent is discipline. With the willful child it sometimes seems like they are DARING you to show them who is boss. So my husband and I came up with a really creative solution. We came up with "extra chores" that the boys don't like to do. Thinks like "clean your brothers room," and take out the trash 3 days in a row." and punishments like "no XBOX for 3 days." and " no TV for 3 days". We have a total of 10 different punishments and chores. We typed them up on the computer repeating each chore or punishment 4 times. Then cut out the chores/punishments and folded each slip of paper in half and put them all in a beautiful cut crystal candy dish. We also added one "free pass" to the mix. And we explained to the boys that from now on when they got in trouble they would have to "pull a card" from my candy dish to find out what the consequences of their actions would be. You see my husband and I wanted our boys to learn that their lives are a direct response to their actions. Bad choices bad life. We also wanted them to know that every once in a while they will get away with something but that doesn't mean they will ALWAYS get away with things.
So here is how it works. The boys are punching each other they both pull a card. I don't really care who started it they both know they aren't allowed to punch each other. They want to argue about it? Pull another card. I ask them to do or not do something and they purposefully don't do as I ask...pull a card. Each card that is pulled must be shown to the parent that told them to pull it and then put BACK in the jar. If we come up with new punishments we can add them to the jar.
It really has worked well. Most of the time I only have to ask if they would like to pull a card to get them to stop doing something. I never have to scream at them I can be calm at all times. The arguing has almost completely stopped. One day the youngest and most willful got to 5 cards in one day. But most days the boys are playing with the team.
If I can help another mom to get her kids to play on her team I want to hear from you.
One of the hardest things I have found as a parent is discipline. With the willful child it sometimes seems like they are DARING you to show them who is boss. So my husband and I came up with a really creative solution. We came up with "extra chores" that the boys don't like to do. Thinks like "clean your brothers room," and take out the trash 3 days in a row." and punishments like "no XBOX for 3 days." and " no TV for 3 days". We have a total of 10 different punishments and chores. We typed them up on the computer repeating each chore or punishment 4 times. Then cut out the chores/punishments and folded each slip of paper in half and put them all in a beautiful cut crystal candy dish. We also added one "free pass" to the mix. And we explained to the boys that from now on when they got in trouble they would have to "pull a card" from my candy dish to find out what the consequences of their actions would be. You see my husband and I wanted our boys to learn that their lives are a direct response to their actions. Bad choices bad life. We also wanted them to know that every once in a while they will get away with something but that doesn't mean they will ALWAYS get away with things.
So here is how it works. The boys are punching each other they both pull a card. I don't really care who started it they both know they aren't allowed to punch each other. They want to argue about it? Pull another card. I ask them to do or not do something and they purposefully don't do as I ask...pull a card. Each card that is pulled must be shown to the parent that told them to pull it and then put BACK in the jar. If we come up with new punishments we can add them to the jar.
It really has worked well. Most of the time I only have to ask if they would like to pull a card to get them to stop doing something. I never have to scream at them I can be calm at all times. The arguing has almost completely stopped. One day the youngest and most willful got to 5 cards in one day. But most days the boys are playing with the team.
If I can help another mom to get her kids to play on her team I want to hear from you.
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THAT is soo clever. I'm gonna give it a try. Thanks for sharing this. I'm always looking for new things to try to have an goody bag of tricks to shock her with since she grows un phased by things so easily.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my site today. I wish we were in Calif, I'm sooo sick of Jersey and the humidity. Now we have constant gray, looks like its going to rain any second, kinda days. I feel like I live in Seattle w/all this gloom.
Anywho's, following on GFC, and voted on the google tag. Are you on twitter at all?
Thanks for stopping by Blondes. Yes we are on twitter. @thearmyofmoms. We are having our June gloom here. Average temp 75 and over cast...but I guess it is better than humidity.
ReplyDeleteoops I had a blonde moment we are @armyofmoms on twitter. Sorry.;)
ReplyDeleteMy oldest (who is now 21) was a strong-willed child. But I lived through it & so will you. I found just grounding didn't do much good, so when her friends would come to the door to play, I would make my daughter go to the door & tell them she couldn't play. This killed her.
ReplyDeleteP.S. They do outgrow it.
Stopping by from VoiceBoks!
Ha! I have four kids -- two of them willful, so I guess 50 percent is o.k. That doesn't mean it's not profoundly frustrating and annoying! One of my "angels" is a little girl and the other is one of my three boys. Waaaahhh! I wanna be willful once in a while! Know what I mean? Grounding doesn't do any good for me either. I've found that adding on chores that mommy and daddy would normally do onto their chore list helps -- a lot! They must fold the laundry to the standard that I would do it (if that;s what I added to their list). If they don't, there;s not yelling, no getting angry, I simply show them a couple of examples of what I expect and they repeat until it's right. They ALWAYS get it right by the second time (sometimes even the first).
ReplyDeleteSamantha from vB (http://www.medtopicwriter.com)